Uncle Volodya says, “The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. “

Paul Goble was a CIA analyst. Oh, I don’t need to worry about blowing his cover like happened with Valerie Plame or anything dramatic like that; it was quite a long time ago. And besides, he wants you to know. It’s in his bio. He also spent some time at the State Department, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Voice of America and a basketful of Baltic colleges and academies.

They all seem to think he’s a pretty smart guy. Well, let me tell you what. If I had a dog that wrote like Paul Goble, I’d tape his paws together with duct tape, change the password on my laptop when I knew he wasn’t looking, and he would have forgotten the word “biscuit” by the time he ever saw another one. Because Paul Goble is a black belt in Dumb Fu; the inside of his head must look like a bowl of elbows. That’s one explanation, and that’s one we can forgive, because stupid people can’t help being stupid. Another is that he’s willfully ignorant, and just keeps broadcasting the same message like a stuck record of the Moron Tabernacle Choir, because he likes the sound of it.

Or he’s pretending, for reasons of his own, to be an imbecile. Like, an undercover idiot, if you can imagine that. I ask you; after the number of times it has been pointed out – with 8×10 colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back explaining what each one is, like in Arlo Guthrie’s monologue from “Alice’s Restaurant” – that the “demographic situation at home” (in Russia) is not “worsening”, why in the name of Jesus jumped-up Johnnycake do self-styled academics and intelligentsia like Paul Goble keep writing that it is? Over and over and over, I swear to God, Diogenes must be doing wheelies in his grave.

Listen, Paul. This is like gravity – you cannot just write that something is true and make it true by wishing, if it is not true. Here, try it. Write, “I have a firm size 36C breast on my forehead, that I can squeeze whenever I am too lazy to walk upstairs and wake the wife up”. Now feel your forehead. Is there anything there? What!!! How did you spell that??? No, seriously, I’m messing with you – of course there’s nothing there; you must have known there wouldn’t be. Riddle me this, then, Paul – How can the demographic situation in Russia be “worsening” when the population is increasing, while the demographics show that Russia is still 80% ethnic Russian? What about that spells “worsening” to you? I could see it if you’d said “Ukraine”, where they’ve lost 2 million people in the last 9 years. That, right there, is a demographic situation which is hurtin’ for certain, shows no sign of reversing and is only likely to worsen in the near future. Not much helped by the self-appointed Ukrainian government in Kiev killing off its citizens like it heard there were too many, either, not to put too fine a point on it, and I cannot help but observe the lack of alarmed Goble gobbling on that reality.

Nor is this the least of the counter-intuitive Gobelesque gobshite – if only. No, as fantastic as it may sound – “fantastic” being used here as a consolidation of “holy shit, is this guy on smack or what? This is analysis?” – Goble is of the apparent opinion that Moscow (a term interchangeable with “the Kremlin” and “Putin”, just as if Moscow were not a cosmopolitan city of somewhere between 13 and 15 million but rather consisted of Putin and his cat in the Kremlin surrounded by miles of cracked mud flats in summer, and driving snow and howling wolves in winter) desperately wants a new Cold War.

He has cleverly – for him – couched it as “Why Moscow Desperately Wants a New Cold War, and Why There Isn’t and Won’t be One”, which makes it very difficult to prove “Putin” in “the Kremlin” in “Moscow” never wanted one in the first place, because like he says, there isn’t going to be one. I’ll tell you who really wants a new Cold War – NATO.

Russia under Putin has worked steadily to improve the standard of living for its citizens, with noticeable success. It has sought opportunities to showcase the improvement in the country by aggressively pursuing hosting privileges for international events such as the Formula One, the World Cup and the recently-concluded Olympic Games, assessed by many to have been excellent (including IOC President Thomas Bach), although there was a U.S. -led effort to ruin them before they started by pretending to be avid supporters of gay rights, and the mean-spiritedness which has grown to characterize official America where its pathological hate – Russia – is concerned was very muchon display. In fact, American reporting showcased how female reporters have come into their own, as Danielle Weiner-Bronner and Tara Wanda Merrigan grappled in the mud for the title of bitchiest bitch of all time. Russia patiently waited 18 years to join the World Trade Organization, which already included 6 of the 16 countries rated “Worst of the Worst” for oppression, harassment and state crimes against the individual by Freedom House. Russia was not on the list. Russia has steadily sought to open itself up to foreign investment, restricting foreign ownership only in industries which are considered to affect state security.

Russia was kept out of the WTO for 18 years due to opposition from the United States, plus whatever dicksplat country (like Georgia under Mikheil Saakashvili, a pathological Russophobe who could always be counted on to jam a stick in the spokes) the U.S. could persuade to lodge a complaint, while some of the worst human rights abusers and world’s poorest countries enjoyed membership. The United States passed the Magnitsky Act, sanctioning Russian citizens without a trial on behalf of a British businessman. The USA and European Union passed an escalating series of sanctions against Russian citizens and financial institutions to punish Russia for involvement in the unrest in southeast Ukraine while such involvement remains unproven and several items offered as proof turned out to be deliberate fabrications. Yet State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki (whom Jen – hilariously – dubbed “Psaki-path”) is an almost-daily feature on television yammering that Russia is not doing enough, it must do more, we trusted it to act in good faith and instead it screwed us in the bum, maybe it’s time for more sanctions to really put them in their place. Oh, I think it’s clear who really wants a new Cold War.

Moscow wants a new Cold War, saith Goble, to divert public attention from Putin’s “disastrous economic policies”. What, you mean like moving up to world’s third-highest recipient of foreign investment? Moving up to fifth-largest economy in the world, as ranked by the World Bank? Those disastrous policies?

Meanwhile, in Goble’s America, the debt grew twice as fast as the economy last year, and now stands at a scrotum-shriveling 104% of GDP. If you were looking for some disastrous economic policies, Paul, I suggest you start looking in ever-widening circles starting at your front door. Stop when you get to Washington.

Russia is modestly increasing its defense spending, projected to grow 44% in the next three years. But it also allowed its forces to run down to a shadow of their former selves; nobody in their right mind would be able to substantiate the notion of Russia aspiring to militarily dominate the globe based on its defense spending, and in fact the Russian government has repeatedly affirmed that it is not interested in being more than a regional power. The United States, however, spends nearly 10 times what Russia does on defense despite being a substantially smaller country – Russia only recently displaced the UK, which could get lost in Russia’s vest pocket, as third-largest global spender – and spends 2.7 times more than Russia and China spend combined.

Russian diplomats and cabinet ministers in Kiev during Euromaidan? Zip, nada, not a one. Yet you couldn’t swing a dead rat on a string without hitting a Pole, a European Foreign Minister, an American senator or a U.S. State Department official during the giddy celebration of organized dissent. Vickie “Noodles” Nuland and Ukrainian U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt got caught mapping the future Ukrainian government exclusively to fit the foreign policy aims of the USA – although Washington is almost 5000 miles from Kiev while Moscow is less than 500. The Washington Post reported from Donetsk on April 17th of this year,

“At a most dangerous and delicate time, just as it battles Moscow for hearts and minds across the east, the pro-Western government is set to initiate a shock therapy of economic measures to meet the demands of an emergency bailout from the International Monetary Fund.”

Both John Kerry and the disgustingly-disappointing president he serves regularly commented on how seriously the USA and NATO took Article 5 of the NATO Charter – the one that says an attack on a NATO country is an attack on NATO – despite the fact that Ukraine is not a NATO country, and never will be so long as it persists in its position that it still owns the Crimea and will one day take it back. NATO will not entertain membership for countries with unresolved boundary disputes; it’s what scuppered Georgia’s chances, and probably is the dominant reason behind Saakashvili’s doomed lunge at Tshkinvali.

If you thought the idiocy was over, au contraire. In a departure from common sense so radical that it twisted the needle off the flabbergastatron, Goble argues, [New Cold War rhetoric] “keeps the west off balance because it prevents many in the west from seeing what he is doing and from taking the kind of steps that are necessary to stop him.” I see. Cold War rhetoric endows the instigator of it with the power to cloud men’s minds, so that they are incapable of seeing what he is doing. Well, if that isn’t just about the biggest and most spectacular piece of bullshit I’ve ever heard, I don’t know what would top it. Would you say the west focused more attention on what the Soviet Union was doing during the Cold War than at other times, or less? Do you think starting a new Cold War would cause the west to pay greater attention to what Russia was doing, or less?

There is absolutely nothing about Cold War rhetoric which would cause the west, and particularly the Russia-hating U.S. of A, to be unable to see what Putin was doing, and in fact the amount of attention and expenditure of assets to increase surveillance and monitoring of Putin’s every move and word and thought would increase dramatically.

It’s clear who wants a new Cold War. And it isn’t Russia. And contrary to Goble’s prediction, those who want it might just get it.

940 Responses to Is Paul Goble Just Pretending to be an Idiot?

There is a poor scribe called paul goble,
Who consider his words as quite noble,
Yet these golden turds aren’t even fit for true nerds,
And leaves him looking ignoble.

Can we call him ‘The Gobule’?

1. A small globe, esp a drop of liquid – as in his russophobia dripping from his lips on to the keyboard from the excitement at finding another angle to stick it to Russia.

2. Bok globule. A dense spherical cloud of gas and dust in interstellar space that absorbs light from stars. – As a producer of dense gas clouds far out there in interstellar space who absorbs any kind of rubbish to be reproduce as russophobic analysis.

This is a video clip where he talks about the claim that he was killed. He makes no mention of the USA or Obama. The “translation” has ZERO to do with what he says in the video. From his manner of speaking he is by no means a loonie and is by no means trolling.

He basically says that the claim by the regime that he was killed is an attempt to raise the spirits of their fighters. This is a very accurate assessment considering he has become a sort of poster boy for the DNR. The regime goons are seriously under-performing on the battlefront and it is routine for the Kiev regime to make all sorts of hysterical claims. Calling their suppression campaign an “anti-terrorism operation” confirms this fact. There has not been a single instance of terrorism in the east (sorry, but taking over government buildings in a popular revolt is not terrorism). In fact, it is the regime that is clearly engaged in terror from the atrocity in Odessa to the shelling of civilians in Kramatorsk and Slavyansk.

Correction: I had previously only seen the part where he dismisses reports of his death. In this clip he also says that they caught a black US mercenary and would put a bullet in his head to send a message to Obama not to meddle in Ukraine and back the regime. He also talks about eventually getting to Kiev to remove the regime (a noble goal) and adds some token trash talk about taking the campaign all the way to America. OK, this is more inflammatory but nowhere does he threaten to terrorize US civilians. He is alluding to the fact that the Kiev regime and its US patrons both need to be removed from power. Of course, the US regime will not go away. And probably its Kiev quislings will last in power as well since they have the full backing of NATO.

Anyway, regime opponents have a right to talk trash at the USA which fully and openly backs the terror regime in Kiev.

They are spinning them. Does anyone expect some DNR fighter to express his love for the USA. This is a routine ploy to rile up self-loving Americans who think the world should love them and pretend the USA can do no bad. Americans have a problem with understanding causality. When someone expresses anti-American sentiments after some malfeasance of the USA, then they are full justified and not an “evil doer” worthy of extermination. “They hate us for our freedoms”…ugh.

I’ll admit I LIKE ABBY MARTIN and consider her a prized asset for RT America. HOWEVER, I still don’t understand her reluctance to learn SOMETHING about or even VISIT the country which writes her paychecks. IF she did, she would’ve been able to counter the garbage and falsehoods tossed at her by Adam Koresh about the size of the Russian economy (Kokesh falsely claimed that the US economy was 39 times the size of Russia’s when it’s actually 8 – big difference – and less so when you consider the US has more than twice Russia’s population), Press freedom, Democracy etc.; Martin claims that all the “criticism of Russia is warranted” but what is this based on? of course ALL countries should be subject to criticism, but as we know, much of the western criticism of Russia is sensational, hypocritical and exaggerated for geo-political reasons. having just left there, I can certainly attest to that to some degree. She also erroneously claims in this interview that Russia is controlled by 3 oligarchs!? How can she work for RT and be this badly misinformed? I really think it’s time for Abby Martin to visit Russia and learn something about the country. In fact, perhaps it’s time for her employer RT to INSIST on it and make it mandatory.

I think you are being far too harsh on her and she was at a party and having a few drinks too (with a bottle of beer in her hand). I think that your suggestion would be sure to backfire. Does she speak Russian? Who would be her guides and what kind of access would she get? What would be the point if it turned in to a Russian sponsored trip equivalent to what the US regularly practices where they get to see lots of cool stuff, visit cool places and a few gifts and all they have to do is peddle some real criticism free fluff pieces, i.e. focusing on personalities but no the issues behind them in any depth.

“We’re at war with Africa” – this passes as good PR for american generals? JFC!

She was clear. There is a need for a counter force to US crazyness simply to keep us all alive and safe. Better balance usually means compromise and filter out the nuts.

As for “criticism of Russia is justified”, then that is true, but I think it more likely that her view is that it is not in the way the West totally over dramatizes and exaggerates every single issue. She’s at a party after all.

I don’t speak Russian either yet I went and managed – and probably with fewer advantages than Abby would have at her disposal (with her employer being headquartered there and all).

Mark Sleboda had a conversation with her over Crimea and stated that it was his view that Ms. Martin intended to remain ignorant on issues pertaining to Russia. I’m sorry, but there’s simply no excuse for her not to make a trip there if she’s going to take positions such as she did on Crimea – and take a stand against it – over the air. RT can supply her with a translator and she can go out and interview whomever she pleases (Duma members, Kremlin officials, opposition figures, etc.).

As I stated, I do like her but find that she could learn a little more about Russia – especially if she’s going to hold strong opinions on matters pertaining to it.

Well, she doesn’t have to go anywhere if the problem she is experiencing is ignorance of basic facts and fundamentals about Russia, thrown at her in English. How dozy do you have to be to be mute when a big juicy smackdown like “The US economy is 39 times the size of Russia’s” goes floating by? There was no Russian in there, and a quick visit to Trading Economics, Russia Indicators would have given her reliable information on a variety of statistics, all of it well-sourced. Koresh could have been mocked until he cried, and instead she is the one left looking like a boob.

Besides, it is of little moment if the USA’s economy is 50 times bigger than Russia’s if its debt is 50 times bigger as well – it is to little advantage to have a huge GDP if it is all money that is owed to foreign creditors or pirated from massive social programs like pension funds and social security. The USA’s debt is gargantuan, a huge vulnerability, while Russia’s debt is tiny by comparison.

Instead, it has become the fashion to just shoot your mouth off directly from notes somebody just handed to you, or from a teleprompter, such as Jen Psaki flubbing the meaning of “carousel voting” the other day, although she had just accused Russia of the practice in tones of righteous indignation. “Talking heads” is an apt description.

“The Russian parliament is planning to pass a bill which effectively assimilates bloggers into the mass media. If the bill passes into law, information on popular blogs will have to be checked for accuracy, and the authors will have to reveal their real identities. Experts argue that this is an attempt by the authorities to take control of the internet….

…How to check for accuracy

TV journalist Nikolai Svanidze believes that the bill is an attempt by state authorities to control the internet sphere.

“This is straight-out pressure on freedom of speech. Any famous person can easily get 3,000 readers, and has to practically behave like the media. But the question is – how can an unprofessional journalist verify information? This is unclear,” the expert explains…

…An official assimilation of bloggers into the mass media will definitely influence public opinion; we will be trusted more,” explains Dementievsky.

The photographer is absolutely convinced that those who publish information on the internet have a responsibility to verify that information. “I often see mindless reposts of completely false information online, and sometimes people write nonsense themselves,” says the blogger.

“Maybe some people will perceive the news as a negative thing, and I understand them, but if this law will reduce the amount of misinformation on the internet, it’s good. I, personally, will be involved in this to a lesser extent because I do not write on political issues, and these are the spheres where the real information wars are taking place.”
—

As with most laws, it is as much how the text is interpreted and the law applied as much as the text itself. The fines are fairly small ranging up to a 30 day post suspension.

“(Reuters) – Factories sounded their sirens in two cities of eastern Ukraine on Tuesday and steel workers held a peace rally in support of a call by Ukraine’s richest man for protests against armed separatists who plan to disrupt a May 25 presidential election.

In his strongest condemnation yet of rebels who have seized strategic points in towns in the heavily industrialized Russian-speaking east, Rinat Akhmetov urged people to unite “for Donbass without weapons! For Donbass without masks!”..

…The initial response to his call, however, was modest…

…About 300 workers in white hard hats and the red and grey overalls of Akhmetov’s Metinvest company were first bussed to a football stadium from the Ilyich steel factory where they heard speeches calling for Donbass to be rid of weapons and then taken on to Azovstal, also owned by the oligarch….

…The sharpness of Akhmetov’s attack on the separatists, whom he accused of waging a “genocide of the Donbass”, confirmed he was now committed to supporting the government after months of hesitation…
—

It looks like the West has told Kiev’s oligarchs to make a choice after a bit of squeezing. The only problem with that is that the West and Kiev won’t hold to their end of the bargain.

“For Donbass without masks!!” What horseshit. Except for Pravy Sektor, of course, who go about everywhere in balaclavas so as to conceal their identities. Always easier to infiltrate your enemies, too, if all you need to do is change the ribbon you’re wearing because nobody knows who you are.

Akhmetov is just trying to protect his money, nothing surprising about that, and it is likewise not surprising that he is a “ball of energy” in that pursuit; we’re talking about an awful lot of money.

Oligarchs never worry about austerity, because it typically does not affect them much. If Ukraine gives in to the oligarchs this time and trusts them to look out for their well-being, they will never get free. The entire upper echelon of their political class is comprised of wealthy oligarchs, and there is nothing else to choose from.

“…Such is today’s space Realpolitik that, while the United States paid for most of the $140 billion space station, launched nearly all of it into orbit, and controls most of its day-to-day operations from Houston, Russia still holds the trump card: access.

“They have us right where they want us,” said three-time NASA astronaut Mike Coats….

…Since that time Russia has substantially hiked the price of a trip to the International Space Station, to $71 million per seat. Less well recognized is the disparity in station crews. Before the shuttle stopped flying, an equal number of American and Russian crew members lived on board. But afterwards the bear began squeezing. For every two NASA astronauts that have flown to the station, three Russians have gone.

NASA doesn’t advertise this, of course. It’s an embarrassing reminder to the country’s political leadership of how their legislative vagaries have cast the space agency adrift….
—-

Meeeeeooooow! Poor kitty!

The USA didn’t do it for love, they did it for money. They were doing themselves a favor and Russia just happened to be there and is supposed to be grateful for the american subsidy of the russian space industry throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Same with the Peace for Atoms program where the US got very high grade nuclear fuel which would have cost the Soviet Union a lot to produce, for fairly small change and certainly much less than the US could have produced it for its ageing nuclear reactors.

“Launched nearly all of it”…what a load of shit. Anyone with a functional brain is free to take a look at the composition of the station:

Typical chest-thumping from the “exceptional people”.

Browsing the web I see all of the ludicrous headlines about Russia killing the space station. Americans need to get a bit more humble (in conformity with their supposed values) and stop being such a collection of lying arrogant dicks.

None of NASA’s original designs could meet the budget restrictions. Russia proposed a merger with their own Mir-2 project. Russia built the first element of the station – the control module – under contract with Boeing.

Time for a short and off-topic public-service message; we are rapidly coming up on the 50,000 th comment, and are well inside the 500-comment gate. As most of you know, to the generator of each 10,000th comment goes a coveted Kremlin Stooge coffee mug. The one coming up is not only one of only two remaining (one each to winners Alexander Mercouris, Moscow Exile and Reggie and one sent to Anatoly Karlin in recognition of his accurate guess of how many votes Navalny would win in the Moscow mayoral election), but it has additional history; it was won by Peter, but anonymity meant more to him than classy coffee and he refused it. We made up a rule on the spot that if you didn’t take it, you could choose who got it, and he chose Yalensis. Possibly because of all the rude insults heaped upon Yalensis over a couple of years by Peter, Yalensis also declined to provide a mailing address, or perhaps he also treasures his anonymity or worries the NSA will track him down, but he also did not take it, so the mug associated with 40,000 did not go anywhere.

That surprise rule prompted by Peter’s win showed us we needed some rules, so here they are. You can’t win twice, so if you already won once, you can choose who it goes to. If you don’t want to provide a mailing address (just to me, not to everybody, of course; I will contact the winner privately by email), you can designate who it goes to. I can’t win, obviously, so if mine is the 10,000th-interval comment, the winner is the one right after mine, as if mine never happened.

Thanks Yalensis, maybe next time, but i would trade a mug for all the info all of you guys post here, and also that you provide the traslation, thanks a lot.

Now, should I be worried about the NSA, cuz Im planning to go to the US on october, and well, my twitter, fb and tumblr, are not friendly to the american imperialist agenda. My dad once warned me about posting those things, although I dont do it with my real name, but who knows; if I cant get in, then I will know they really listen or see everything, not that I care really. I go there to visit some friends and family and do some shopping. Funny thing is that I dont think average americans share the same opinion about Russia as the press or the gov, or at least the americans I know don´t.

Dear Ali Cat:
I think you should be fine in U.S. I don’t think NSA actually kills bloggers, to them you’re just metadata.
I hope you have a nice trip to America, you should try to see Seattle, if you get a chance. It’s a fantastic city.

The journalist said he was fairly treated by Ukrainian law enforcers but he himself as well as his car were searched and his laptop was confiscated

MOSCOW, May 20. /ITAR-TASS/. British journalist Graham Phillips, freelancing for Russia Today (RT) international news television channel, has been detained in the south-eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol by the country’s National Guard, RT reported on Tuesday on its website.

“I’m sitting at a blockade post in a portacabin. The dialogue is quite interrogation oriented,” Phillips was quoted as saying over telephone.

The journalist said he was fairly treated by Ukrainian law enforcers but he himself as well as his car were searched and his laptop was confiscated.

“I’m being treated OK by them… They found my reports and clips I’ve done and they’re now looking through them asking me my position on things, asking if I’m a spy, and asking me quite thorough questions,” RT quoted Phillips as saying.

“They’ve taken my bulletproof jacket and my helmet, but on the other hand they haven’t in any way inflicted any form of injury or any actions on my person,” he added.

According to RT, two weeks ago Ukraine’s Right Sector radical movement offered a bounty for catching Phillips, promising $100,000 for the capture of “Russian spy.”
The British Foreign Office stated to an ITAR-TASS correspondent that it was aware of the situation with Phillips, but had no comments as of yet.

The case with Phillips comes in the wake of the detention of two Russian journalists by Ukraine’s pro-Kiev law enforcers several days ago.

Two journalists working for the LifeNews television channel, Oleg Sidyakin and Marat Saychenko, were detained by the Ukrainian law enforcers near Kramatorsk. The journalists had last contacted their colleagues at LifeNews on Sunday. A day earlier Deputy Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security Council Viktoria Syumar accused them of terrorism incitement in the Donetsk region.

Massive protests against the new Ukrainian authorities erupted in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking south-eastern territories after the secession of the Crimean Peninsula, which declared independence on March 11 and joined Russia on March 18 following a referendum.

The eastern Ukrainian Donetsk and Lugansk regions held referendums on May 11, in which most voters supported independence from Ukraine.

For anyone who can understand French and has some spare time on their hands. Please read University of Paris XII Professor Annie Lacroix-Riz 60 page article debunking the Holodormor. I have previously posted links to a 4 page article by Lacroix-Riz. Obviously the 60 page version goes into further depth in debunking the Holodormor. The primary sources for the Holodormor fiction come from Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy diplomatic reports, however the French diplomatic reports mention the lack of food affecting the entire USSR, including northern cities like Leningrad..

We are living in times when facts do not matter. Something has changed since even the 1970s. People are much more willing to lap up transparently biased and delusional nonsense from their leaders and their mass media. I am even seeing the Kiev regime being tagged as duly elected. This indicates the problem is the lack of attention span and consumption only of superficial pundit analysis which is spun to fit an agenda and not designed to spread factual information. Seems like this is the result of the instant gratification information age and the failure of public education to teach people how to think (problem solving) and instead having them play with computers plagiarizing content from the web.

With the Ukrainian army struggling to contain the grab for power by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in the Donetsk Oblast, armed pro-Ukrainian militias have been quietly taking matters into their own hands.

One of these groups, the Donbas Battalion, has been attacking DPR checkpoints and occupied buildings. After two weeks of careful negotiations they finally agreed for VICE News to visit their clandestine base in what used to be a children’s summer camp in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region. They were cautious about revealing their location as their last HQ was discovered and attacked by pro-Russia forces, forcing them to find an alternative.

We watched them train and interviewed their leader, Semyan, before being invited on an operation the following day. In the town of Velyka Novosilka, the Donbas Battalion tore down the DPR flag and replaced it with Ukraine’s colors, reinstalled the pro-Ukrainian administrator, and lectured the local police on loyalty and duty — all at gunpoint. We then left Velyka Novosilka quickly, as there were reports of armed pro-Russia groups heading our way.

The Ukrainian army’s “anti-terror” operation has so far failed to dislodge separatists from their strongholds in Sloviansk and Donetsk. But the flexibility of the Donbas Battalion, and other groups like it, could help turn the tide in Kiev’s favor. Equally, they could help further destabilize an already volatile region. Yet with the Ukrainian presidential elections taking place on May 25, it’s likely that Semyan and his men will be busy in the days ahead — and we’ll soon find out.

The so-called Donbas Battalion is likely being formed by the same people who make up the National Guard. The NG is seen as foreign to the region, meanwhile the DB will be seen as local resistance. A good tactic by the junta, but it ain’t fooling me.

This Donbass battalion is basically Kolomoisky’s death squad.
They are quartered at an old PIoneer’s camp, it shouldn’t be that hard for the insurgents to figure out where these brainless Nazis are.hiding.

Creating armed formations like this is one of those great blunders that governments fighting popular uprisings always seem to make. Vicious, unruly, and frequently cowards in the face of the enemy, these Black and Tans groups always complete the process of delegitimising the government they serve.

The two parties could not agree about the price. The same thing has happened many times before. China wants gas with cheaper price that Russia is willing to sell. But Russia did the right thing, because natural gas is a precious commodity which should not wasted or sold with discount.

“Fuck the EU!” was premature. Russia is and will be dependent on EU on gas sales as long as Russian economy will not diversify.

The Chinese want Russian gas on the “cheap”, the Chinese don’t want to pay market price. If anyone has time please read the link below, it is a report written in 2011 that but still highly relevant, that analyses and chronicles Russian-Chinese gas negotiations.

And Russia should not sell cheap. If Russia would agree to humiliating terms with China then Russia would only become a colony where China can get cheap resources. Russia must have more pride than that.
Then again, Russia has only itself to blame. Russia is still dependent on natural resource exports despite having over two decades time to diversify its economy. This internal weakness enables foreign powers to blackmail Russia. The West can “sanction” Russia with a full knowledge that Russia cannot counter that with sanctions of its own.
The West is currently preparing to ban imports of oil and gas drilling technologies for Russia. Right now Russia is in a process to start exploiting the oil and gas reserves in its Arctic shelf and the shale oil and gas reserves in Bazhenov formation. Russia counts that these two sources will prove Russia the much needed income in coming decades. But Russia does not have the technology to go alone with these projects. Sanctions would endanger these projects and delay them for years, maybe even decades, because Russia would have to develop the drilling technologies on its own.

For timber Russia already is a colony for China. Illegal timber sales to China is a big business in Russian far east. A massive amount of forest is cut and timber is trafficked to China illegally without any permission. Local bureaucrats turn a blind eye because they have been bribed by the Chinese businessmen and their Russian partners.
Russian state is losing a great amount of taxes and a very few people profit from it. And the profits are most likely shipped to foreign bank accounts.
So far Moscow has not been able to stop this, which shows that Moscow does not have a full control of the Russian far east. Local (crime) bosses can act without Moscow being able to punish and remove them, and Russia loses its natural resources (timber) for practically free.

By “internal weakness” I mean that currently the Russians are actually living a better life than they would “deserve”. This is because the massive amount of income Russia gets from selling oil and gas. Russia uses this money to pay pensions, pay public salaries fund infrastructure projects etc. Without this money Russian standard of living would plummet.

In a way Russians have not “earned” all that money. It takes only a few thousands of people to pump the oil and gas from the ground, but it provides the means for living for millions.

A big portion of the population does not have to do real work because they can live off with oil and gas money.

Russians won’t have to innovate and be more efficient, because oil and gas provides them for living. My country Finland with 5 million people produces more patents than Russia annually. Can you believe it! These eastern Slavic nations (Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) produce incredibly little economically if you compare them to tiny Nordic countries who are economic powerhouses for their sizes.

If Russians were able to diversify their economy, be more efficient, more innovative, cut “worthless” jobs (Russia has too many full time jobs with low productivity and jobs made by humans that should be automatized) , be less corrupt, stop trafficking tens of billions of dollars to foreign bank accounts annually, be more patriotic etc. etc.

It is easy to blame the evil west for all the things that are wrong in the world. But Russia itself is mostly the blame for its own problems. The West is naturally taking advantage of Russia’s internal weaknesses. But those weaknesses are not caused by the West but Russia itself.

Yes, as Karl is always at pains to point out, it is abundantly clear to all that he is fully supportive of the Russians and takes no pleasure whatsoever in relishing any setbacks that they may appear to suffer; nor does it give him any satisfaction at all to meticulously point out at very frequent intervals what indolent, passive dullards Russians are.

You see, he feels for them and this bitter Angst that he suffers as a result of Russian setbacks gives rise to his frequent and uncontrollable spilling forth to all who are willing to listen his opinion concerning Russia and its peoples’ enormous shortcomings and failures as compared with the achievements of other nations that in all aspects are considerably superior in all that they do.

He most certainly is not a troll laughing up his sleeve at the majority of contributors to this site.

We need Karl. I for one agree with him sometimes. We need this kind of viewpoint. Maybe because I am disposed to depression.

I remember, that I liked these kind of strict teachers in high school and university, who always pinpointed the mistakes in my design as a junior engineer and never made a compliment, except somewhat lukewarmly, when the course was over.

You sure know a lot. Poor Russia, a financial balance sheet and income statement that the west would literally kill for. Low tech? How about the most advanced civilian nuclear power industry, military and aerospace tech beyond much of what the west has, a living standard going up while the west is falling (at least in the US, can’t speak for your neck of the woods), a population with growing confidence strongly supportive of its leadership, improving demographics, vastly improving agricultural output and more. I don’t know if there is such a think as a tech per capita metric but if there is the Russians would be way up there.

Not bad for a country with a population about 20% of the USA, EU and Japan, eh?

Actually you are wrong. The total value of Russian natural gas exports is around $55 billion per year. Given that Russia exports $600 billion in total this is less than 10% of total exports. Russia can afford to give the EU the middle finger and blow farts upwind from it. It is the EU that cannot find *any* supplier which can replace the 30% that Russia supplies for the same price. LNG imports are more expensive and will always remain so since 30% of the natural gas is burned to drive the cryogenic liquefaction.

Ukrainian troops deployed in the country’s east should immediately return to their bases, the country’s parliament said in a memorandum. The freshly-adopted document also urges constitutional reforms based on the decentralization of Kiev’s power.

With 226 votes required to pass the law, the Ukrainian parliament finally adopted the so-called ‘Memorandum of Peace and Consent’, 252 MPs voting in favor. In particular, the document calls “to restore law, order and public safety in the state by stopping bloodshed and bringing to justice those responsible for the killings of civilians during mass protests; to stop the anti-terrorist operation in Ukraine’s southeast and return the soldiers involved in anti-terrorist operations to their places of permanent deployment.”

What is happening? Is this act a bluff to legitimize the presidential election in the eyes of the world by making ‘peace’ with Eastern Ukrainians, asking them to vote, just to resume the operations after the result is out, when, with the votes ‘showing the support of the people for the new government’, the brutal crackdown on ‘separatists’ can be more easily justified as they represent an ‘anti-democratic, Russia-backed’ force? Or are the Germans getting involved, and behind the scenes concessions are being made to satisfy Russia?

Call me cynical, but the Empire has all their guys in place right now, and unless the ‘threats’ from Germany really exist (the ‘threats’ are that the US will not help Ukraine (it won’t) and without Russia, the EU will also not help it, meaning the shabbos goyim will in time be swept from office by an impoverished population, perhaps by force), this is a bluff being carried on the Empire’s orders.

My reading of it is that in the past few weeks the Ukrainian army has suffered a catastrophic melt-down and decimation, which consumers of Western media are completely unaware of, since the news has been suppressed; but Ukrainian politicians themselves themselves are getting wind of.
And now must try to do something in desperation, to staunch the hemorrhage..

Have you looked at the Kyiv Post? Leonid Bershydsky congratulates you if you bought Russian bonds – wise investment. Ruble rises for third straight day on perception of de-escalation, burbles Bloomberg Businessweek happily. There was even an earlier story about how clever Russia and China were to agree to use the ruble in future transactions, but I can’t find it now. It’s not all sweetness and light, but you could be forgiven for thinking you had fallen into upsy-downsy world if you compare today’s paper with, say, two weeks ago.

And you’re right – it’s all about persuading the east that its best course of action lies in Ukrainian unity and in heavy turnout for the presidential election. Poroshenko can easily get elected without the southeast, but his victory will not be perceived as legitimate. The window for crushing the east has closed, so now the best hope lies in seduction and persuasion, and in getting the east to hold the football one more time like Charlie Brown, while the west kicks it. I hope they won’t fall for it, but some probably will.

The Kyiv Post also says Germany hopes for a high turnout to legitimize the new president – well, to stabilize the country, is how they put it – and says that rebels in the east “face the anger of residents” just to let them know they are spoiling what otherwise would be an awesome party as east and west meet in a big soft hug.

In news from the ‘it’s an ill wind’ front – all these army manoeuvres in south and east Ukraine have resulted in a big increase in the demand for fuel. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence’s main supplier is Ukrtatnafta Oil Company owned by none other than Igor Kolomoysky, aka Mr Beached Whale. If you’re an oligarch, short of the head-on-a-pike routine, seems there’s no way to lose.

PrincessEUROPA, The beautiful EU, United Kingdom, 6 hours ago“Watch out Charles, Putin’s fanclub on the DM won’t like that one! I’ve noticed a lot of the same people who love Putin support UKIP, they must have a thing for dangerous thugs!!”

I am used to reading Daily Mail and these comments are the complete opposite of what the DM readership base support. Either DM is doing some dirty tricks with the thumbs up (manipulating social perception) or there are bots doing it.

Thankfully even with manipulation the truth stands well positioned in the comment section, close to the top comments along with the libelous ones.

The stupidity of this royal must be hereditary.

DEC 10, 1936.
THE PRO-HITLER KING OF ENGLAND IS FORCED TO ABDICATE HIS THRONE

England’s King Edward VIII is an admirer of Adolf Hitler’s accomplishments. This creates a dilemma for the Globo-Zionists who wish to instigate a war with Germany. Just 6 months into his reign, there is an assassination attempt against Edward VIII. Jerome Bannigan produces a loaded revolver near the King. After being quickly pounced upon by police and arrested, he claims to have been recruited by “a foreign power”.

Shortly thereafter, Zionist Eugene Myers’ Washington Post reports that King Edward plans to marry an American woman who has still not divorced her husband. British politicians use the “crisis” to squeeze Edward out. Edward is given a choice between Ms. Wallis Simpson, or abdicating his throne. As the story goes, it is for love of Ms. Simpson that Edward gives up the throne. The real reason for the silent coup is concealed from the public..

Hitler associate Albert Speer quoted Hitler as saying:“I am certain through him permanent friendly relations could have been achieved. If he had stayed, everything would have been different. His abdication was a severe loss for us.”
.
With Edward gone, the warmongers of Britain proceed with plans to wage war on Germany. Edward is replaced by his stuttering, stammering idiot brother – George VI – (The King’s Speech), who will spend the coming war years making radio speeches in support of the war.

According to RT Spanish the gas deal has been signed, but it doesnt provide the details of the price, I really hope Russia got a nice deal, I know it wont give the EU the finger but at least Russia wil not be enteirely dependent to the EU, since they hate Russia so much.

That’s a great find, Ali, and you were first. I was just about ready to publish my newest post, which said the deal had not been signed. I didn’t feel like changing it, so I just posted a note near the end to acknowledge the deal had been signed, but this should be a reminder to us all how lucky we are to be able to draw on multiple languages here. English seems to have had the news last, or perhaps they wanted to hold it to see if it could be massaged a little so it didn’t come out sounding like a good break for Russia. Anyway, again, great find, very well done.

Like I said before, the EU’s strategy relies on Russia not being able to sell their gas if the EU doesn’t buy it. Never mind they they could never in their wildest dreams come up with the amount they use from another source, and the people are sick and tired of austerity and cutting back, but that was the substance of their plan – just say, “No, thanks”, and Russia would be baffled and bewildered and say “Wh…What am I gonna do with all this gas? You’ve ruined meeeeeeeee!!!!” It must have been a nice dream.

But if the price was anything even close, it would mean that Russia has an alternative market. They’re exploring opposite sides of the same problem – Russia is looking for alternate buyers to offset a fractious EU that threatens to stop buying, while the EU is looking for a powerful new sugar-daddy to sell them reasonably-priced gas in abundant supply so they can say “Fuck you, Russia”.

Karl please just be possitive, or optimistic. Russia or Putin woundt singed a deal that would be bad for the country. And in any case if it would be bad, I dont think the russian media would be announcing it. You said you are a pesimist, just for once have a bit of faith.

38 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year for the next 30 years, beginning in 2018.

No price stated yet.

Fuck the EU!

They could link up the Strasbourg “parliament” with the gas reservoirs in the Ukraine, though, those places where they hold their siphoned off (read: “stolen”) Russian gas, because all the debating in the European Parliament just amounts to so much flatulence.

You beat me to say: FUCK THE EU, where is your avatar with Putin giving the middle finger, you should change it lol. Now Im going to bed, its 5am here and my mom just woke up and told me why in gods name I’m still awake lol. Have a good day Mr. Exile🙂

The Bloomberg and WST reports are interesting. I checked them one minute ago and they both claim to have been posted less than 10 minutes ago, yet they were identical with their reports that I read over 6 hours ago at 6 a.m. Moscow time.

Yesterday Peskov was saying the 2 sides were going at it like Arab camel traders in the souq [my paraphrase], they were only off each other’s price by 1 digit. I guess that digit turned out to be “4” !

On Wednesday, 21 may, the Russian “Gazprom” and Chinese CNPC companies signed an agreement on gas supplies. As expected, over the next 30 years Russia will supply China with gas at the outlet of the gas pipeline “the Power of Siberia”. We are talking here about deliveries of 38 billion cubic metres of gas a year (with a possible increase to 60 billion).

And another thing: the Russians will be paid right down to the last cubic millimetre for the gas they deliver to China, unlike what has happened as regards payments for gas supplied under contract to the thieving Khokhly.

Given the annual volume, long term contract, price linkage to oil and a very credit worthy customer, its a great deal for Russia! And its good for China.

Natural gas has a heating value of about 1,080 BTU/ft3 or about 35,000 BTU m3 which equals about 2 pounds of crude oil heat-wise. 35,000,000,000 m3 of gas then equals about 70 billion pounds of oi or 350 million tons. One ton of crude equals about 7.1 barrels or about 2,485,000,000 barrels. If oil prices are about $100/barrel, the price would be $24,850 million per year in crude oil equivalent. The forgoing is mostly from memory but this data can be used to determine the ratio between oil and gas pricing which seems a fixed constant in the Russia/China contract.

The above math should be checked but the point is that as oil continues its inevitable price rise over the years, so will the gas price earned by Russia in this deal. I think its a great deal for Russia for many reasons including the initial price and linkage to oil prices.

I like to think that the suspense about signing was to mess with the west in an ongoing effort to reduce their minds to quivering masses of goo.

“I like to think that the suspense about signing was to mess with the west in an ongoing effort to reduce their minds to quivering masses of goo.”

I was thinking of that too.

The Western media is slowly (begrudgingly?) grunting their response. Here’s the FT take on it:

China and Russia sign gas dealChina and Russia signed an eleventh hour agreement to import natural gas from Russia’s Gazprom during a state visit by President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday following strenuous Russian efforts to secure what has been portrayed as a key test of closer Sino-Russian ties.

As Moscow’s relations with the west have deteriorated over the crisis in Ukraine, Mr Putin has sought to show the world and the Russian people that he has alternative friends to the east.

State-owned China National Petroleum Corp, China’s largest oil company, said on Wednesday it had signed a 30-year deal to buy up to 38bn cubic metres of gas per year, beginning in 2018.

The company did not give details on the pricing of the gas, the sticking point in negotiations that have stretched over a decade. Russian media and officials had said the deal would be a highlight of Mr Putin’s visit.

The breakthrough came just hours after PetroChina, the listed subsidiary of CNPC, told the Financial Times that the deal would not be completed during Mr Putin’s visit because of the pricing dispute.

“At the moment the import price and the domestic price are inverted. We are already losing money on imported gas, and we can’t lose more,” said PetroChina spokesman Mao Zefeng earlier on Wednesday.

In the wake of Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine, European countries have been rethinking their dependence on Russian gas.

The deal is a powerful sign of Russia’s ability to reduce its reliance on Europe, the largest importer of Russian energy.

Mr Putin’s visit has been filled with symbolic appearances intended to show the growing strength of the relationship, which both sides have described as the best in their history.
The long-running discussions over the gas deal have involved the price, pipeline route and Chinese stakes in Russian projects.

The Chinese side would have driven a harder bargain in light of Gazprom’s weaker position, industry sources in Beijing said.

On Tuesday, China formally signed previously agreed LNG supply deals as well as a massive coal co-operation project.

For China, with a growing diversity of natural gas sources including from newly licensed Russian exporters, securing supply of piped gas from Gazprom no longer holds the importance it did when the two companies began negotiating a decade ago.

The cunning, inscrutable devils! They told those suckers from London that “the deal would not be completed during Mr Putin’s visit because of the pricing dispute” and then they did or, more likely, had already done the deal behind of FT’s back.

There may be hope for them yet – Gubarev returned from Ukrainian custody. Provided that the SBU still has responsibility for such prisoners, they may yet be released alive and without any irreparable damage.

According to the State department’s Jen (“I think we’re ready to move on’) Psaki, the Life News journalists are ‘terrorists’ because missiles or rockets were found in the boot of their car. She knows this for a fact because Kiev told her or, rather, told US representatives in Kiev who told her. So, expect to see photos of missiles in the boot of a car soon as slam-dunk proof of Russian media’s support for ‘terrorism’. No doubt these guys will be held for as long as this story proves useful. Equally worryingly, Graham Philipps seems to have vanished – probably taken to Kiev. He’s more likely to be deported from Ukraine and banned from re-entry than beaten up and forced to confess to ‘terrorism’ but both techniques serve ‘pour encourager les autres’ – and clearly get across the message that going off (Kiev’s) message is risky business.

Recall a few days ago when Bennie Kolomoisky threatened Tsarev over the phone, said he would burn him down if he returned to Ukraine?

Tsarev is still alive, thank goodness, but last night his house was burned down in Dnitropetrovsk.
Tsarev says a gang of armed men showed up in the middle of the night in 2 buses. This was around 2:00 AM. They threw molotov cocktails into Tsarev’s house and burned it to the ground.

Tsarev says the men acted very calmly, and filmed everything they did, presumably to show later to the guy who hired them.

Tsarev and his family (wife, kids, mother) were not harmed in the incident. Tsarev’s family has already left Dnitropetrovk for their own safety.

Yet another success for Russia. The best part of the Russia-China gas deal is to show Bruxelles that the world is much larger than Europe, and lo and behold, Russia could live without it.

They thought they could isolate Russia, sanction her and bully her to continue funding a hostile Ukraine. With this deal Russia demonstrated a principle: (not without pain, true) she could do without Europe, and more so in the coming decades.

Put this result in line with Russia proven robustness againts petty sanctions, while the West and even the USA could not unleash serious sanctions without risking to tip their zombie economies. They got Ukraine, but discovered it is worthless and will be an embarassment – unless they spend the kind of money Russia was spending via gas subsidies. Add Sochi, Syria and the coming deal with Iran, and there you have a pretty impressive row of trophies, on Moscow’s shelf.

Did I say Ukraine will be an embarassment? Well, I meant another embarassment: on the West shelf we have:
– the double slum dunk disaster of Bosnia and Kosovo, two failed states in the heart of Europe – well done!
– Iraq, which they invaded, cleaned, MOT tested and proceeded to hand down to Iran-aligned al-Maliki
– Libya, where they handed over one of the most advanced African states to dark-ages-minded rioters
– Syria
– Gaza and Palestine
Following this path, there will be no place left on Earth where Western journalist can report the truth without embarassing their employer!

I think I have better evidence that Noginsky is Mossad. We now know who the man who “was sitting right next to Oleg Tsarev” during Benny’s phone call was. Here he is. Of course, I have no ‘evidence’ he is Mossad, but to me it sticks out a mile. I know their style, the pseudo-Left cover in this case. I’ve seen it before.

Hi! You see where this goes: Standard Operating Proceedure for Intel generally: be at both ends of the target. (1) Kokoloisky himself is Mossad’s right-winger. (2) Noginsky is Mossad’s centre-field kicker. (3) This man now high up in DND is their left-field-player which is why it matters that he was there (purely by coincidence, ha ha) when Benny’s phone call came through. Tsarev was the target. They were closing in one him from both sides at once, in the well-known “tough cop/con cop” squeeze routine. I swear, if I have seen this once, I’ve seen it a dozen times. But on the other hand, once one starts operating this sort of stereoscopic x-ray technique, it follows almost immediately that everyone is working for some secret service or other.